Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

THE APPLICATIONS OF EUROPEAN DIRECTIVES AND NEW LAWS

The artist’s resale royalty right legislation, or droit de suite, is a means of recognising the possibility of increasing the value of an author’s original artwork. The law is also related to forming an agreement with the creators of original visual art ensuring participation in the economic success of this work, and levelling their situation to that of author’s of other genres who already gain from this right. In Europe until 2001, the relative dispositions to the royalty right law were prerogatives of each member state; recognition of the right was not obligatory and the laws that regulated in each country could be different.

Our regulations contemplated this enterprise introduced with the author’s rights in 1941 (l.633/41). According to such dispositions, the royalty right legislation applies to the price achieved during the first public sale and to the capital gains obtained by the works for following sales. In spite of far-seeing Italian legislation, already conceiving in ‘41 something that would have become operative on a vast scale these days, you couldn’t say that much for the true application of these laws that have remained unheeded until now.

In 2001, the European parliament issued a proper directive regarding this matter that was focused on the principles of application in order to unify the diverse disciplines of its member states. The dispositions provided by the European Parliament establish that a percentage of the sales will be shared with the artist, no longer calculated based upon capital gains, but on the entire price of sales. To favour less-noted artists, whose shares are generally minor, the share percentage decreases with the increase of the price. Starting with a minimum of 4% for the portion of sale price of works of less than 50,000 euros, decreasing as low as 0.25% for works sold for more than 500,000 euros. As for other laws linked to author’s rights, it will apply to the works of dead artists up to 70 years after death.

The European directive legislation includes a “revised clause”: it foresees the moment in which the text will be submitted to European organisations who will verify the impact on them and the necessity to adapt it. It is predicted to be revised at the start of January 2009. The 2001 dispositions were recognised by law in Italy in 2006, almost the same time it was requested in the EU. Until the law is put into operation, it is now necessary to issue regulations. The text that should become the actual law was presented by Minister Rutelli to the Lower house of parliament and was approved on December 11th last year. The text is now to be published and, according to ministerial sources, we should expect to receive more information within a month.

Once the general principles have been approved, it will certainly be interesting to discover the new effects upon art dealers and also the artists themselves. Initially, the modifications were not warmly welcomed in our country; a lot of people were worried with respect to fulfilling necessary requirements to recognise a sum that is usually not very significant. It seemed however that thanks to the action of some organisations such as the National Association for Auction Houses, conditions that would allow the application of these laws were able to be established. The SIAE (The Italian Society for Authors and Publishers) refers to copyright and payments protection as already established. 120 days is the time available for the workers to regulate payments. The procedure, first conceived on paper, will be carried out via the internet which will be particularly timesaving for the bureaucrats. More information will be revealed only with the publication of the regulations. Only on this date will it be possible to evaluate the art dealers’ responses.